


Freedom's just another word

by Koyote19



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Challenge_duck, Gen, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 22:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2444816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Koyote19/pseuds/Koyote19
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one ever asks the important questions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freedom's just another word

**Author's Note:**

> This is a series of vignettes, mostly pre-series but the last takes place after Home.  
> It's not strictly a songfic. But the lyrics are in italics and from "Me and Bobby McGee", by Janis Joplin.  
> Written for the Feb/March 2006 challenge_duck: Music

I.  
 _From the Kentucky coal mines to the California sun,_  
 _Hey, Bobby shared the secrets of my soul._  
 _Through all kinds of weather, through everything that we done,_  
 _Hey Bobby baby kept me from the cold._

 

If asked, Dean wouldn’t tell you that he went deaf three months before his fifth birthday. That a single scream had burned out the connection between auditory nerves and the ability to process sound waves into something understandable. He didn’t have the language then, even if he’d been old enough to process that something was wrong.

But he was only nearly five and the sudden heavy silence dampening the sound of his mother’s voice was, at the time, more welcome than frightening. The flames licking out of his brother’s room were more than frightening enough.

If asked, John couldn’t tell you that his oldest son went deaf three months before his fifth birthday. He’d placed the squirming bundle that was Sammy in his brother’s arms, and told him to run. If he had to repeat it twice, before finally turning Dean to push him towards the stairs… well, that wasn’t that surprising, considering what lay on the ceiling of the room behind them. It was quite possible that he simply hadn’t said it out loud, or not loud enough to hear over the screams. His and hers. And Sammy’s.

And if he wondered why his son didn’t speak in the weeks and months after the fire, why he was little more than a shadow to John, never out of reach or out of sight, why he silently wormed his way into Sammy’s bed every night to guard them both from bad dreams… well, that was because he was a good brother, wasn’t it?

If asked, Missouri could have told you that Dean had not heard a single sound from the time of his mother’s death to the moment she opened the door to see John standing on her front porch, one son fussing against his shoulder and the other half hidden behind worn denim, only wide hazel-green eyes staring up at her. She merely smiled, and held a hand out to him.

“Come inside, Dean.” He had blinked up at her, smiled for the first time since the fire, and followed the sound of her voice out of the silence.

II.  
 _One day up near Salinas, Lord, I let him slip away,_  
 _He's looking for that home and I hope he finds it,_  
 _But I'd trade all of my tomorrows for one single yesterday_  
 _To be holding Bobby's body next to mine._

If asked, Dean wouldn’t tell you that he died six months before his twenty-third birthday. That Sam leaving for Stanford had ripped a hole in his chest than no amount of time would ever heal. The sound of his brother’s voice, saying goodbye, had severed arteries from organs and left him bleeding internally. Not because he didn’t know what had happened, but really, what was there to say?

Instead, he merely shrugged, and turned to the hunting with a determination that surprised even John. Adrenaline replaced his circulatory system, and if he grew leaner from lack of sleep or eating, well…that was because the job drove both of them hard, right?

If asked, John might have told you that Dean died six months before his twenty-third birthday. When his own fear for Sammy had faded from anger through concern to regret and quiet pride, he saw the changes in his eldest son and despaired. But the Hunt had become more than a job for both of them, and when they bled, well, that only meant the heart was still pumping something.

If asked, Missouri would have slapped them both with a spoon, and sent them to Stanford.

III.  
 _Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train_  
 _And I's feeling nearly as faded as my jeans._  
 _Bobby thumbed a diesel down just before it rained,_  
 _It rode us all the way to New Orleans._

If asked, Dean would not have been able to tell you why, three months before his twenty-seventh birthday, he still only listened to cassette tapes, or why those tapes did not include any with female lead singers. He would have defended his taste in classic rock, and did frequently enough in the years before Sam had escaped to college, normalcy, and music that somehow never included Metallica. But he would have said it was a preference engrained from childhood, and long hours in the car where radio reception was sketchy between cities and radio towers. Convenience, rather than design. And it would have been a lie.

He wouldn’t have mentioned the fact that his father had one vinyl record salvaged from the fire, from life before 11/2/83, when the world went silent with a single scream. He wouldn’t have remembered that that album, The Pearl, had been his mother’s favorite, or that every year on the anniversary of his mother’s death, his father had somehow found a record player and played it until the lone bottle of whisky had tipped over empty, the candles had burned down to waxen pools, and the tears had run dry again for another year.

If asked, John would not have guessed that the only memory his son still held of Mary’s voice when it wasn’t a scream, was her dancing with him and singing softly about Bobby McGee. He wouldn’t have known that Dean never heard the music each year, not because John waited until both boys were asleep to conduct his private ritual, but because, crouched outside the door of his father’s room, Dean was listening to the silence ringing in his ears rather than the mournful throb of Janis Joplin’s voice.

If asked, Sam would have merely rolled his eyes, and muttered that Dean had always had questionable taste in music, and really, after twenty hours straight of using AC/DC to stay awake on the drive from New Orleans to San Francisco… Dean might even have agreed.

IV.  
 _Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,_  
 _Nothing, that's all that Bobby left me, yeah,_  
 _But feeling good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues,_  
 _Hey, feeling good was good enough for me, hmm hmm,_  
 _Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee_

 

When asked, Dean had no answer for why Missouri had pressed a tape case into his hands as they left his childhood home in Lawrence. He hadn’t heard Sam’s question, his ears still ringing with the sound of his mother’s voice whispering his name. Turning it over later, long after they had left Missouri and home behind, he frowned at the handwritten notes scrawled on the back in black marker. His name written in his father’s scrawl, familiar from months spent poring over his journal for clues. And in a neater print that he somehow knew was Missouri’s: Listen. You can hear it now. Still confused, and half afraid of hearing nothing, he slipped the tape into the dash.

If asked, Sam would have told you he had no idea why Mary had apologized to him, but not to Dean. Why she had only whispered his brother’s name and left him stricken and dazed, before turning to Sam to say “I’m sorry.”

And he would have had no answer for why, as the soft guitar strains filled the car, and the low pulsing heat of Janis Joplin’s voice filled the car, his brother had smiled just a little, in spite of the never before imagined sheen of tears in his eyes.

And that was a question he wasn’t ever going to ask.

_Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,_   
_Nothing don't mean nothing honey if it ain't free, now now._   
_And feeling good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues,_   
_You know feeling good was good enough for me,_   
_Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee._


End file.
